Designing Your Life

Dysfunctional Belief: I should already know where I’m going.
Reframe: You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.

Dysfunctional Belief: If you are successful, you will be happy.
Reframe: True happiness comes from designing a life that works for you.

“Network” is more noun than verb.

Dysfunctional Belief: I should already know where I’m going.
Reframe: You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.

Designers build their way forward. What does that mean? It means you are not just going to be dreaming up a lot of fun fantasies that have no relationship to the real world—or the real you

Change is always uncertain, and there is no guarantee of success, no matter how hard you try

When you have a well-designed life and someone asks you, “How’s it going?,” you have an answer

Dysfunctional Belief: Happiness is having it all.
Reframe: Happiness is letting go of what you don’t need.

If you’re beginning to think like a designer, you will recognize that life is never done. Work is never done. Play is never done. Love and health are never done. We are only done designing our lives when we die. Until then, we’re involved in a constant iteration of the next big thing: life as we know it.

Everything that surrounds us was designed by someone. And every design started with a problem. The problem of not being able to listen to a lot of music without carrying around a suitcase of CDs is the reason why you can listen to three thousand songs on a one-inch square object clipped to your shirt.